Streaming digital media in the form of video, audio, graphics and associated data across a network is an efficient way for content creators and providers to reach a large audience at lower costs. Increasingly, organizations use digital media technologies for education, training, marketing, video and audio archiving of meetings, tutorials, webinars, webcasts, and mass distribution of digital content to large consumer bases for commercials, new product introduction, and other applications. Academic and medical institutions are using digital media content and streaming technologies as pervasive and spatially unbounded classroom training tools that enable students and teachers to capture educational events such as university lectures or operating room procedures, distribute that content to a large institutional base, and access that content anytime or from anywhere in the future. Many businesses are using these media tools to record meetings, training, and presentations and then stream that content live and/or archive the content for later use. In many cases, this technology is gradually replacing the old system of tape recording or writing down meeting minutes. In education, this technology is used pervasively for an e-learning-type curriculum, and therefore, a new breed of institutions has emerged that relies solely on this technology, known as “virtual campuses.”
In order to maintain access privileges, privacy rights and generate the growing amount of metadata necessary to catalog, publish, and manage the digital content, highly-trained technicians and administrators are currently required to operate and maintain even small-to-medium scale content management systems. Setting up any streaming media system for presenting real-time and on demand content to users is a laborious and complex process requiring highly trained personnel to set up systems, create, manage, and distribute the content across a network. Many companies such as Cisco WebEx®, Citrix GoToMeeting®, Sonic Foundry's Mediasite®, and On24®, provide managed services to make the process simpler. Granular access control to protect confidentiality of content is required by law for many sectors, such as the legal, medical, and defense sectors. This security must be maintained for long periods of times and constantly, in many cases. Securing access to digital media with this multi-tier access even prevents some users from using digital media content at all. For example, medical privacy laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), prohibits technical personnel to view or access sensitive content of individuals. Since most medical staff lack the necessary skills to input the associated metadata and operate such systems, some medical institutions have stopped using streaming systems completely to ensure privacy rights are maintained.
Current digital content management systems require several steps that are not automated. For example, a user must initiate a recording and/or streaming session by manually operating a piece of equipment or system that is designed for recording and/or streaming. Further, additional parameters must be set, such as input sources, file formats, resolution, bit rate, frame rate, color depth, etc. Also, a user must designate an IP address and/or filename for the digital content, as well as a destination (e.g. network drive, directory) for the recorded content. Currently, a user must manually enter metadata (e.g. title, description, keywords, date produced, copyright, author, etc.) into fields in the software of the content management system to attach information to the recorded media file that is necessary for the management of the content. Also, to distribute the content, a user must make copies or move the content to each destination (e.g. network drives, directories, etc.) in order to make the content accessible to the appropriate individuals or departments. This often requires a complex process of transcoding the media into various formats for various types of computers and personal electronics. Currently digital content management systems do not provide the means for the initialization and sequencing of commands for automating and managing external computer, electric, electronic, mechanical and electromechanical systems and equipment that may be associated with the delivery of digital media, or with a given application or event.
There is thus a need in multiple areas of business to provide an automated system and method to create digital multimedia content and distribute and manage the content delivery while maintaining a high level of security and controlled access to the content. There is also a need to provide a system that automates the initialization and sequencing of commands for automating and managing external computer, electrical, electronic, mechanical and electromechanical systems and equipment that may be associated with the delivery of digital media, or with a given application or event.